Google map error could be the death of me

August 16, 2009 4:35 PM

How do you report or fix an error on Google Maps when all the self-fix / reporting error options are unavailable?

I live in Australia, way out in woop-woop at the end of a private road (for anonymity sake lets call it Private Rd) that comes off another road (lets call it Public Rd) which comes off the highway (which we'll call the North-South Hwy).

Public Rd is misnamed in Google maps as Republic Rd (not exactly but you get the idea). Private Rd is not listed at all. We have an accommodation business plus a farm on Private Rd and signs at the corner of Public Rd and Private Rd pointing to our property. By mud map standards we are very easy to find as Public Rd, Private Rd and our property are all well sign-posted.

However, because Google maps and other mapping systems list Public Rd as Republic Rd, many people including all emergency services who use map navigation systems, cannot find our location. I have made a note on our accommodation web site directions page pointing out this issue, but still potential customers are also getting confused. Our insurance assessor almost dropped our policy because he couldn't find us on Google Maps.

I cannot lodge any error reporting through Teleatlas as Australia is not listed on their drop-down box of country locations. Yet the link to Teleatlas is given on the maps.goggle.com.au page. Neither can I make a Community Edit as Australia is not one of the 164 countries listed as being mapped by Google.

I've looked through google map forums and the consensus seems to be that the error reporting system sucks, big time. Unfortunately, most questions about Australian errors all receive the same impotent information about going to Teleatlas etc.

Has anyone found a foolproof way to get Google to alter their street titles on their maps? By the looks of things, google maps are not to blame - my navigator system on my phone also misspells the name - but Google maps are the most frequently used by potential customers. Any idea how I can find out where they got their initial information from and correct that?

In some ways, getting the council to change the name of Public Rd to Republic Rd seems the easiest answer (if you can't beat them etc...) but there is over a century of history in the naming of the road dating back to a specific event during the gold rush. The real name of Public Rd may have looked like a misspelling to some data-entry operator ("I've never heard of a Public Rd. It must be Republic Rd!"). To homogenise the name seems like giving in.

We saw our first deadly snake of the season this morning. Getting bitten and not being able to receive assistance due to a map misspelling is the stuff of nightmares for me.

Any ideas folks?

posted by Kerasia to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Does the Google Earth reporting link work for you? Otherwise I have no idea short of some Google type reading this and fixing it from the inside.

FWIW my neighborhood has the wrong name on Google Maps (pluralized when it shouldn't be) and I haven't had much luck getting it fixed.
posted by reptile at 5:04 PM on August 16

From the TeleAtlas FAQ:

How can I enter reports for countries that cannot be found in any of the lists?

Click the link ‘Can’t find your country in the list?’ in step 1. Fill in the form that is displayed there.

which would probably have worked if the link had been there.

But it seems as if you can in fact select any country, and then zoom out until you get a global view, then drag the map until you see Australia, and then zoom in and use the marker to "pinpoint" the actual location, and finally use the "additional remarks" to give them the full story. Might work.

(But if you really suspect that your local emergency services are using Google maps for locations - something I doubt is covered by the ToS - you might want to come up with a couple of alternative ways to describe the location, including writing down the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) somewhere where it's easy to find.)
posted by effbot at 5:29 PM on August 16

I'm not sure whether there are other major providers in Australia, but in the US, map data that's shown in Google, on the other web mapping sites, and on GPS systems come mainly from TeleAtlas and Navteq. If you want the data fixed, you have to go to the source, not to Google. The process can take a long time to trickle down to Google and GPS systems -- sometimes more than a year -- but as far as I know, there's no shortcut.
posted by daisyace at 6:24 PM on August 16

You could also contact Geoscience Australia as they supply a lot of mapping data to government and emergency services etc.
posted by impluvium at 8:16 PM on August 16

A very kind mefite who doesn't want to be known as the 'google-support-guy' memailed me and advised me to check out Map Data Sciences which appear to be the original data suppliers for the Australian side of google maps and other Australian map data providers.

I have written to them and asked that they correct the error. If they respond I will post their answer/action here.

Thanks all for your help, especially you, google-support-guy.
posted by Kerasia at 4:35 PM on August 17